Gustave Kerker

Gustave Adolph Kerker (February 28, 1857 – June 29, 1923), His family emigrated to the U.S. in 1867, settling in Louisville, Kentucky. Kerker played in pit orchestras at local theatres and then began to conduct. His early operetta, Cadets, toured the South in 1879. Kerker then moved to New York City, where he was engaged as the principal conductor at the Casino Theatre. There, he began to add his own songs into the scores of foreign operettas, notably Charles Lecocq's The Pearl of Pekin, since these works had no effective copyright in the U.S.

Kerker's first complete operetta in New York was Castles in the Air in 1890. He wrote over 20 shows, the most successful of which were the London musical burlesque Little Christopher Columbus (1893), and the international musical hit The Belle of New York (1897). Other notable musicals included An American Beauty (1896), The Girl from Up There (1901), Winsome Winnie (1903), The Tourists (1906), The White Hen (1907), and Fascinating Flora (1907) to a book by R. H. Burnside and Joseph W. Herbert. In 1909, he was asked to leave Germany by authorities for having failed to perform military service in his youth.

He was one of the nine founding members of ASCAP in 1914.

Kerker was married twice: first to Rose Keene whose stage name was Rose Leighton (married 1884) and second to Mattie B. Rivenberg (June 5, 1908), a show girl in the musical Nearly a Hero who was 30 years his junior.

Kerker died following an "attack of apoplexy" at his home on 565 West 169th Street in New York City at the age of 66. (libretto by Charles Doty and Joseph W. Herbert; lyrics by Herbert) The Tourists (libretto by R. H. Burnside) 1907 The White Hen (libretto by Roderic C. Penfield; lyrics by Penfield and Paul West) Fascinating Flora (libretto by Burnside and Herbert) 1909 Die oberen Zehntausend (libretto by Julius Freund) 1912 – Two Little Brides (libretto by Arthur Anderson and Harold Atteridge) 1921 – The Whirl of New York, based on The Belle of New York (libretto by Morton and Edgar Smith.